[Militant International Review, No 28, Winter 1985, p. 4-8]
For Marxists, the movement of the miners’ wives and the many thousands of other women who have supported the miners in this dispute, is a welcome continuation on a higher level of the upsurge of militancy amongst working class women in recent years. It underlines the increased polarisation brought about by the deepening crisis in capitalist society and is an indication of the willingness of this section of the working class to struggle to defend jobs and their communities. Many of the wives intend to remain organised and politically active after the strike, understanding the need to continue the struggle against the capitalist system. It is therefore important to set this movement in its historical con-ext, to analyse what processes led to the increased activity amongst women and what implications this struggle will have for the future.
The first point to be made is that this movement stands in a long tradition of female militancy which predates even the establishment of the labour movement. Women were involved in spontaneous demonstrations and ‘riots’ for example against increases in food prices and, in the sixteenth century uprisings amongst woollen workers in the cottage industries. As capitalism developed mass production and drew women into factory labour, they formed Benefit Societies which provided basic insurance against illness and funds for strikes and lockouts.
When women workers were excluded from the craft unions due to fear of both female and unskilled labour which they represented, they built their own trade unions or joined the mixed unions prepared to recruit them. Once drawn into struggle they proved themselves to be no less militant than the men. For example, in Stockport in the massive power loom weavers’ strike of 1840, 24 men and boys and 21 women and girls were arrested for harassing scabs. Under the influence of the dockers’ struggles, in 1911 15,000 unorganised women workers in 25 firms in Bermondsey struck against low pay. In the course of the strike, they were organised into a union by the Federation of Women Workers and won a pay increase.
Women’s militant tradition
The whole history of the labour movement points to the conclusion that, in spite of the disadvantages they experience, women workers have been prepared to move with their class. At times of confident class movement even the ‘unorganisable’ – homeworkers, housewives, domestic workers have been organised, even if only temporarily.
Women not only involved themselves in trade unions but built political organisations. In their book One Hand Tied Behind Us, Jill Liddington and Jill Norris catalogue the struggle of thousands of working class women for the vote, which they saw as a means of influencing legislation which determined their pay and conditions and their right to organise. For working class women it also represented part of their struggle for increased education and health facilities for their class. In addition to their contribution to the building of the Independent Labour Party and the early Labour Party, they built their own women’s organisation. Alan Hutt, in the Post War History of the British Working Class (p. 48) states:
“Even more spectacular in many ways (than the growth of the LP) was the spread of organisation amongst women. In 1919 there were 271 Labour Women’s Sections, in 1920 there were over 425, in 1921 there were 650, several having around 800 to 900 members. The aggregate membership being 70,000.”
This reflected the revolutionary mood in society at that time. Similarly, the Women’s Organisation grew during the ’26 general strike. The National Women’s Officer’s report at the 1927 Women’s Conference described the important role the WO played in the ’26 strike in the mining areas, where they had sections based on pit villages. ‘“The number of Women’s Sections in April 1926 was 1,642, an increase of 192 on the previous year. In April 1927 this was increased to 1,728. Membership has grown more quickly than before, especially since the lockout. Our estimate now reaches nearly 300,000 individual women members.
In addition to the WO of the LP there were also the Women’s Co-operative Guilds which were particularly aimed at organising women in the home. At the end of the First World War they had 32,000 members, in 1930, 67,000 members in 1,400 branches. They campaigned on such issues as birth control, maternity care and education for girls. Their writings and reports give a graphic picture of the lives of working class women between the wars.
The significance of such organisations should not be underestimated. Women are sometimes referred to as ‘backward’ members of the class almost as if it were biological. Although such descriptions are partly based on historical ignorance of the contribution that sections of working class women have made to the labour movement, there are other factors, some of which will be dealt with later, which may cause women to be hesitant about undertaking or supporting a struggle.
One of these has been the isolation of women in the home and their material responsibility for the home and the welfare of children. Isolated in individual households, they experience a remoteness from the labour movement, are subject to the indoctrination of the media and may even not be aware fully of the issues at stake. This of course has also been a problem in the miners’ strike for those miners who have not been active on the picket line. In future struggles the labour movement in any case will have to pay attention to ending this isolation.
The Women’s Organisation of the LP and the Women’s Co-operative Guilds were an attempt to overcome this problem. Recently, we have seen committees of wives at Hindle Gears and Cammell Lairds and the most extensive and effective organisation in the form of the miners’ wives’ groups.
The extent and effectiveness of women’s organisation such as the Guild and the WO was strongly influenced by the drawing of women out to work, raising their consciousness and confidence. Women workers, especially textile workers played an important role and undoubtedly amongst the miners’ wives, the number of women who work and have some experience of trade union organisation has helped in developing some of the groups.
Struggle for equal pay
However, women, particularly married women, only represented a small proportion of the workforce until recent times. By 1931 only 10% of married women went out to work. In some industries and in clerical work, marriage bars were enforced to end women’s employment once they married or became pregnant.
By 1951, the number of married women workers had risen to 21.7%. The boom years following the war led to a massive extension of jobs, especially part-time jobs in the public sector and the service industries. By 1977, 57.9% of the female workforce were married. The latest figures indicate that this has risen to 62% which includes almost 55% of women with dependent children. Women are now 40% of the workforce in Britain.
The drawing of women out to work in such large numbers in the boom years was a major contribution to the raising of working class living standards and aspirations. But we also saw a contradictory process taking place as far as working class women were concerned. On the one side reformism became deeply rooted in the labour movement. it was argued that capitalism had solved its problems, it could deliver the goods. It was simply a question of ‘humane’ management of the existing system. For women the quadrupling of further and higher education led them to believe that even if their jobs were monotonous and low paid their children might escape through education and acquired skills … a belief which has now been totally shattered by youth unemployment which is fuelling the anger of working class women against capitalism.
At the same time as reformism was becoming entrenched, women were going out to work in such numbers and for a prolonged period of time that it raised the confidence of some sections of workers who began to feel that they were the equal of the men they worked with. We saw the struggles around the question of equal pay which challenged a fundamental assumption of capitalism that irrespective of their contribution to society, women are always secondary, subservient in work and in the home.
The struggle for Equal Pay was instructive from several points of view. There had been intermittent struggles around this demand since women had first gone out to work. The first recorded demand was in 1833 by the Powerloom weavers. The first resolution calling for equal pay was carried at the TUC in 1888.Both wars saw attempts by women workers, labelled ‘dilutees’, to gain the male rate for the job, often with the assistance of the men they worked with. The ’45 Labour government dismissed the demand as inflationary. In the thirties and the sixties clerical and civil service workers took up the issue. USDAW launched a campaign in 1961. In the mid sixties the Women’s Advisory Committee opposed Labour’s wage restraint policy on the grounds that it made the struggle for equal pay more difficult. In 1970, 30,000 rag trade workers starting in Leeds came out on strike. But the major battle was at Ford Dagenham in 1968 when 187 women machinists struck against a grading system which put them all on the bottom two grades. They demanded upgrading to take account of the skills involved in their work. The strike was made official and the women won a temporary victory. Undoubtedly this was the most significant strike in achieving the Equal Pay Act.
It should be remembered by those calling for further legislation today that this legislation was conceded by a reformist Labour government not because of a belief in abstract principles or from the goodness of its heart but under pressure from industrial action by women workers. Although the legislation legitimised their demands many sections of workers have since learned that without a willingness to struggle, e.g. at Tricos, legislation will remain a dead letter.
Another aspect of the Equal Pay struggle which contributed historically to the so-called backwardness of women workers, or more precisely in this case the scepticism they feel towards the leadership of the movement, was the equivocal support they received when they advanced this demand. It is often pointed out that many women workers don’t fight for equal pay because they have been convinced to regard themselves as secondary breadwinners. However, the Labour leadership itself has contributed to this view. Reformism bases itself on the idea that there is a fixed section of the national cake which is available to workers. Any advance, therefore, for one section of the working class must be compensated for by sacrifices by another. This approach, combined with an acceptance of the ideology of capitalism in relation to women’s rôle in the home, has never actually prevented capitalism from using women as a pool of cheap labour for factories and offices. It has simply facilitated discrimination against women in terms of wages, opportunities and conditions.
Reformism blocks women’s demands
It has also meant that the programme of the Labour movement has often lagged behind the consciousness and demands of women workers. A recent survey for the Department of Employment demonstrated that under pressure of women going out to work, many traditional views are changing amongst both women and men. When women were asked if married women should have the right to work whatever their family situation, 71% of the women agreed, 47% very strongly. Although husbands were more traditional in their views than their wives, there had been a significant change. In the coming period it will be essential for the labour movement’s programme and leadership to build on these changes counteracting further traditional, discriminatory views on women.
These questions will be posed particularly sharply in the near future. The recession was a blow to women workers along with the rest of the class. The struggle for equal pay appeared more difficult at a time when the right to work at all was being threatened. However many sections of women fought tenaciously to hold on to what they had gained. The mid to late seventies was marked by struggles for trade unionisation in sweatshops, the continued growth of the public sector trade unions, accompanied by struggles over low pay and cuts in public expenditure and struggles against redundancies which led to factory occupations for example at Lee Jeans and Meccanos. One aspect of this period was the willingness of fresher layers of workers, who had little previous experience of struggle. to fight, where other sections were more hesitant. A sure sign that women workers have drawn the lessons from these disputes, particularly the role played by leadership, and that the growing aspirations they developed during the boom years have not been wiped out by the recession,.is the debate that is now taking place in the movement on the question of positive action and positive discrimination.
These issues are dealt with fully in the Militant pamphlet Positive Discrimination or Class Action. Militant supporters are opposed to a negligent, dismissive or patronising attitude to working class women in the movement. Women are seriously under-represented at all levels of the trade unions and labour movement particularly at leadership level regionally and nationally. This is a reflection of the difficulties experienced by women at rank and file level and of the failure of the trade unions to adequately fight for their members. We have therefore supported any provision which can be made to encourage and enable the mass of working women to be active through the provision of special schools and courses, crèches, babysitting, transport where necessary, meetings in works’ time etc. We also support discussions on issues relating specifically to women on the agenda of mixed meetings and all male meetings. The responsibility for recruiting women to the labour movement and for fighting for their interests is not the monopoly of women but the responsibility of male workers too.
Positive action of this kind is essential if the demand of TU democracy of the Broad Lefts is to be translated into a concrete reality in many unions. In NUPE, for example, ⅔rds of the membership is female and half are part timers. Positive action is necessary to ensure that these women trade unionists can participate in the election and accountability of the leadership and in determining the policy of a union in which they have such a big stake.
Militant has only opposed those measures which we regard as no more than a token change e.g. the reservation of seats for women on various committees which are no guarantee of a genuine change for the mass of women, and simply paper over the difficulties.
However, women want to change their organisations and to participate in them to struggle more effectively on issues such as jobs, pay and conditions. In the coming period, the national minimum wage will be a central demand. Already we have seen the magnificent struggles against low pay in the 78-79 winter of discontent and the CPSA and NHS disputes. Millions of women would be recruited to the trade unions and involved actively if this demand were part of a serious campaign.
The lack of urgency and caution of the Labour leaders in taking up such a demand is not just a question of prejudice against women. It illustrates the minefield which the most reasonable demands of women workers represent, particularly in a period of capitalist crisis, for the reformist leaders who consider capitalism to be eternal. Already the old, old story of the right wing is being sung by Hattersley. ‘If low paid workers are to advance, then this means sacrifices for the better paid. Any advance towards a minimum wage can only be considered as part of a package of wage restraint’.
The ‘Left’ such as Michael Meacher MP, have supported the demand for a statutory minimum wage. But women workers would point out that, welcome as legislation is in legitimising their demands, the Equal Pay Act did not give them equal pay any more than the Sex Discrimination Act ended discrimination against them. A national minimum wage requires more than legislation – it requires a struggle.
No movement which takes this demand seriously can obey anti-trade union legislation which outlaws solidarity action. One factor in workers being low paid is their lack of industrial muscle. They require blacking, solidarity action and secondary picketing to ensure a victory.
Women’s double exploitation
Considering the proven ability of capitalism to avoid legislation and the rulings of the wages councils, the labour movement must have the right to police such legislation through the opening of the books of firms not paying, with the back up of the threat of nationalisation by a Labour government of any firm refusing to pay. But we also have to explain to women workers that a large number of the low paid are concentrated in the public sector, where expenditure cuts have hit both jobs and pay. A major struggle could force the payment of the minimum wage to a large section of workers. However, the main problem would remain. Because of the rapid decline of British capitalism especially the decimation of manufacturing industry the capitalists would attempt to reverse these gains. We support all workers struggling for reforms but in the end only an end to capitalism itself will secure these demands and more on a permanent basis.
But it isn’t just the demands raised by women at work which represent a minefield for the reformists. Under capitalism, women are doubly exploited as workers but also as women in the home with the main responsibility for child rearing. Any crisis in the economy is reflected in all the institutions with which capitalism surrounds itself. Unbearable pressures are exerted on the family at times of economic crisis and at the same time, women’s increased involvement in work outside the home leads them to question their role in it.
The history of the labour movement shows that when there is a movement of the class, women will use it to improve their position both as workers and within the home through campaigns related to violence, sexual harassment, health provision and especially, maternity care, education, birth control and childcare. Anyone reading the account of working class lives in ‘Maternity’ will have no doubt about the benefit of such reforms. Although fundamentally, birth control, for example, did not change women’s role in society, for millions of women it meant less of the chronic ill health and weariness brought about by endless childbearing and rearing and added to the combativity of the present generation of women.
Yet such reforms which attempted to combat the worst of women’s oppression under capitalism did not automatically receive the support of the labour movement. In the case of birth control it was often put forward by the ruling class as a means of dealing with poverty which confused the issue. But issues such as birth control, divorce, abortion have often been surrounded in a moral fog by capitalism backed up by the Church to prevent workers from seeing that such oppression of women is not natural but fostered in the interests of the capitalist system and the needs of private property.
In the early ’20s and ’30s one of the main battles being fought by the Labour Women’s Organisation and the Guilds was for birth control. At the ’27 Women’s Conference it was second in importance only to the resolutions on the ’26 strike and the nationalisation of the mines. Some activists had been arrested for distributing what was termed ‘pornographic’ literature – i.e. leaflets on birth control. After their work and support in the General Strike, the women felt they had the right to ask for support on this issue at the LP Conference. The resolution was moved by a miners’ wife. But their appeals fell on deaf ears and they were defeated. This was a setback both for the women and the movement as a whole.
It is because of such irrresponsiveness by the official movement that such issues often become the subject of single issue campaigns, e.g. the recent campaign for abortion. Yet when the TUC raised its little finger the largest-ever demonstration in favour of abortion took place.
Already working class women have fought to retain nurseries, transport, against closures in the NHS and education services, and there is increased opposition to sexual harassment at work. It is inevitable that these issues will be raised in the trade union movement. The oppression of women is one of the biggest indictments of capitalism. If the demands for good quality, flexible childcare, youth facilities, a crash house building programme, an expansion in the NHS, education and training were included in a socialist programme they would encourage women’s involvement in the movement and enable all workers to understand that capitalism has distorted every aspect of their lives and will increase their determination to see an end to it.
But how can such demands be fought for by a Labour leadership obsessed by the language of “priorities”. Even the demand for a nursery place for every child appears unrealistic to reformists. But on the basis of a planned economy under workers control and management the resources could be generated and organised to provide for this elementary right if women are to take part on a truly equal basis in society.
In the coming struggles, millions of women will move into action. Their anger and bitterness against a system which condemns the majority of them to low paid monotonous work is added to by the fact that no matter how hard they work, how hard they try to feed, clothe and bring up their children, or keep their home clean and comfortable, capitalism undermines, belittles and trivialises their efforts.
The miners’ wives have demonstrated the audacity and organisational ability of women when they move into struggle. They have also demonstrated the rapid raising of consciousness women are capable of in the course of struggle, rejecting old ideas and grasping the basic ideas of Marxism, e.g. in relation to the state. They have remarked that nothing will ever be the same again. If that is to be translated into reality it is the duty of Marxists to reach such women and offer them a clear alternative.
The emancipation of women is not an optional extra in the struggle for a socialist society. Marxism offers an end to the exploitation of women as workers and as women, through ending capitalism and building a socialist society which will provide the resources necessary to free women from domestic drudgery and the material responsibility for childrearing. Women therefore will look to the Militant with high aspirations. We must make sure we build a movement and put forward a programme which will channel all their considerable abilities and energies into the struggle for socialism.
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